Bladdernut
The Bladdernut is not really all that far from
its proper habitat --- in fact, you can find stands of the shrub along
the River Trail
that are rooted in just the right place. The ones on the Cliff
Trail would not be so odd if they were not 300 feet higher in elevation
than the floodplain
plant community. You see, Bladdernuts like floodplains.
Actually, what they like the most is floods.
The shrub
received its name because of the balloon-like bladder of air
surrounding each seed, an adaptation to water dispersal. If you
pluck one of the odd, bulgy seed pods off the Bladdernut bush and toss
it in the river, you will be able to watch as the pod bobs along on the
surface until it rounds the next bend and drifts out of sight.
The plant is extremely well adapted to habitats that flood frequently,
because the high waters naturally pick up the seed pods and carry them
many miles downstream to a new floodplain just waiting to be
colonized. When the flood waters recede, the Bladdernut pod drops
to the ground and slowly rots to reveal the seed inside, which will, in
turn, sprout and grow into a new Bladdernut bush.
So how did
Bladdernut shrubs end up near the top of Sugar Hill? They seem to
be doing fine in their new, cliff-side habitat, perhaps because
Bladdernuts thrive on limestone as well as floods. I cannot help
wondering whether one of the settlers who used the Cliff Trail to reach
the Frenchman’s Settlement might have planted a Bladdernut along the
trail, or even just dropped a seed that he was fiddling with as he
climbed. The other possibility seems far-fetched --- that the
Clinch River flooded so high that Sugar Hill was nearly completely
underwater, allowing a Bladdernut pod to drift up and land on the edge
of the Cliff Trail.
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